COMBAT_OBAMUNISM [they/them, comrade/them]

launched either the early stages of an offensive (reconnaissance in force) or a feint from Sumy across the border into the Russian Federation, into Kursk oblast.

• The fighting is ongoing, and Ukrainian losses appear substantial.
• Misinformation and conflicting accounts are in abundance, with some accounts reporting that the NATO regime in Kyiv has amassed a full brigade in this direction while others suggest this is little more than another PR stunt.
• The attack has also generated a few “victories” for Kyiv, including footage of a Ka-52 shot down and a small group of captured Russian soldiers. Some vehicles apparently made it a few km in before they were destroyed.
• There is a degree of frustration among some ostensibly pro-UA sources over opening a new front at a time when military resources and personnel are stretched thin.

It’s still early, so there aren’t many reliable sources. Here is the report from Rybar (CW: Twitter—every kind of reactionary, pro-imperialist comment)

Might not quite qualify as news, but market indices across the Transpacific satellites have cratered after Monday’s opening. Not even close to being a finance person so I might be relaying some information incorrectly; perhaps others who are more informed can chime in.

Nikkei was down ~7 percent over the past 2 days, its largest such drop ever (but has recovered some), nearly 20pct contraction from peak

Occupied Korea: KOSPI down 7pct over the past week, triggered a halt when futures precipitously dropped

down nearly 7pct just today

With much of the world’s attention directed toward West Asia, there was another large-scale drone attack against targets within the pre-2014 borders of the Russian Federation last night. The attack appears to have saturated air defences. Targets where strikes were successful include several oil facilities, an apartment block, and an ammunition depot on the grounds of the Morozovsk airfield.

Sources that follow are from Twitter, so standard CWs apply: reactionary and pro-imperialist content is ubiquitous in the comments.

Pro-Russian source (summary from Rybar)

Pro-Ukrainian “OSINT” source (satellite imagery of Morozovsk after the ammo depot was blown)

(edit: word order)

voting for Joe Biden is not an endorsement of Joe Biden

And yet, anything but fullthroated support for the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to the imperial extraction regime in means you love Vladolf Putler according to these same people

Libs are truly incapable of self-reflection

As somebody who is pretty ignorant of the region and theory as regards multinationalism vs national self-determination, the Spanish system (within the Iberian landmass, saying nothing of the obvious historical exploitation relations with regard to overseas occupations) of “autonomous communities” superficially appears relatively progressive. Now, when we factor in that the side seeking further autonomy or independence is often left-aligned and struggling against a bourgeois dictatorship deeply ensconced in EU institutions, the case for support is clear. But on the other hand vulgar support for “national self-determination” is an imperial instrument of the liberal order that is selectively used to empower ultranationalists against multinational or pluralistic systems, as seen in Xinjiang, Yugoslavia, the USSR cases.

So I guess I’m asking, outside the scope of exploitation of one people by another and the superstructure (e.g., racialisation of an underclass) that emerges from this, what are the cases for supporting independence movements? And is there any recommended theory on this? I’m not talking about the obvious cases here (like “New Caledonia”), but for instance Scotland–critical support for the breakup of one of history’s most brutal metropoles, but potentially at the cost of strengthening a modern institution of the hard right, the EU.

The president of Kyrgyzstan, Sadyr Japarov, has recently signed into law major restrictions on imperial NGOs (ratified last month). Some here might recall similar events in Georgia around a year ago sparking an attempted colour revolution. Hopefully Kyrgyzstan’s better economic integration with China and Eurasia (and the absence of any delusions about ) will lead to a cleaner expulsion of imperial influences.

Relatedly, Georgia’s government has not given up on their efforts to ratify an anti-NGO bill. (Although the western-sponsored riots in Tbilisi around a year ago successfully intimidated the plurality Georgian Dream party into withdrawing the bill, it failed to remove the government.) Now a resurrected bill is back in the news after the parliament voted on and passed a first reading. The president has declared intentions to veto, while the plurality party continues to back it with the potential of recruiting supermajority support.

Major protests in solidarity with the resistance have renewed in Amman, Jordan during the past several days. The focus of the protests is the embassy of the occupier, with which the Hashemite puppet regime retains numerous agreements and close ties. The police enforcers of the Hashemite regime have continued their months-long crackdown against the overwhelmingly pro-Palestine population and responded with the usual state violence.

CW: police, beating, descriptions of violence

Source 1 (video)

Source 2 (video)

Source 3 (text)

To be clear, most of the reports were from the night before